


Lazarus Rising

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen, righteous!jo verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The righteous!Jo verse is a re-imagination of the Supernatural canon wherein Jo is the righteous man who broke in hell, breaking the first seal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lazarus Rising

**Author's Note:**

> For Lena and Juna

Jo’s hands shake as she lights a spluttering match. Flames flicker around the small confines of the coffin, while a thread of smoke spins from the wavering flame. She sucks in a breath, tells herself to slow down, stop, conserve the oxygen—puts her hand over her mouth, squeezes her eyes shut. 

Does not think of hellfire as she lets the match smolder out.

She scrabbles at her coffin. The wood is weak, rotting, crumbling under her fingernails, splattering her belly as she tugs at the planks. Dirt falls onto her face, into her eyes, her mouth, her nose.

She holds her breath, chokes on grave dirt as she pushes her fists and hands and shoulders through the ground.

Someone grips her by the wrists, hauls her up before Jo can re-orient herself, struggle.

The earth cracks around her from the force of her ascent.

Pebbles fall into her boots—she can feel them slide between her toes even as she swings around, wrists still clasped in someone else’s hand, legs swinging and kicking, as she eyes the person gripping her tight. 

“Let me go,” she says, spitting the words through her teeth.

“Alright,” the person says, gently.

Jo’s boots touch the ground. The grip loosens, and Jo crumples, muscles weak from rotting away in coffins and dirt. She curls up close in around herself, hand dragging through the grass for a stone, for anything that could serve as a weapon.

A long shadow falls over her, and Jo jerks up, squinting. It looks like the person’s hair is on fire, that the wind is caressing flames that lick the sky.

Jo swallows down the memory of a pillar of fire pushing through the shadows of hell, how the chains had melted from the heat. Her throat swells with thirst even as her eyes prick with water. She wipes a grimy wrist across her mouth. “Who are you?”

“Anna,” the person says, crouching down. 

Jo eyes Anna. Their hair is dyed red and cropped unevenly short like they did it without looking in a mirror. Looks human—but Jo knows that Anna is not.

“I’m an angel,” Anna says.

Jo tries to laugh, but it comes out dry and husk-thin. “Of who? God? Glory be hallelujah?”

Anna smiles small and sure. “Hmm. No.” Anna puts a hand over their heart, in the open v of their blouse. “Not all demons are devils, you know. Same here. I’m not like the others.”

Jo pushes herself back. “No.” She ducks her head, lets her dirty hair fall over her dirty cheeks, licks the earth from her lips.

She had hidden herself then, too. Back in hell when the pillar of fire had come. When everything was so bright, driving the shadows away, even the ones that flooded her eyes black, and she saw the person on the rack before her, cut open— 

Jo buries her hands in the loose earth, struggles for breath through the way her throat is swelling and collapsing at the same time.

Anna’s hand rests on her shoulder, and she jerks away.

“Why did you bring me here?” Her voice is tight. “I don’t deserve to be here.”

Anna crawls closer on hands and knees. “Would you rather be down there still? Would you rather stand before the rack, a knife in your hand, ready to begin again and again and again? Is that what you want?”

Jo refuses to meet their eyes. She digs deeper in the earth (it stings against her split knuckles), scrapes her fingertips—tender and new and sore—over the face of a rock. She knew that if she went back down there—she might say no for another thirty years, maybe forty if she was strong, if she could be stronger—

But she had broken once before.

“You should have left me to die,” Jo says.

“I would never do that,” Anna says.

The rock is heavy in her palm now, and she curls her fingers around it, grips it until it hurts her sore nail beds.  “You’re an angel. Aren’t you supposed to smite the wicked?” 

For the first time, Jo risks glancing at Anna, forgets to breathe when she realizes how close Anna is, how she should be able to feel Anna’s breath ghosting across her skin except that Anna isn’t breathing, isn’t blinking as they look into Jo’s eyes, unflinching just like in hell when they saw each other clear.

When Jo saw how their wings, so many that Jo lost count, filled the torture chamber with light, searing the darkness. How, no matter where Jo turned, to the right or to the left, she could still see Anna’s faces—the one with the chopped short red hair and the human eyes, the face of a ram, their curling horns stained with gore, licking blood from their victim’s cheek, the beak of a flaming bird releasing the inmates of hell from their cages, from their chains—and a snake, coiling around Jo’s wrist, keeping her from raising her weapon against Anna as she whispered, her forked tongue tasting the sulphur and the blood reeking from Jo’s skin, “Don’t be afraid.”

Anna’s hand trails down Jo’s wrist, finds the rock in her palm. Dips their head forward until Jo’s eyes are shielded from the glare of the setting sun by their hair, by the tower of their neck.  Anna cups her cheek with one free hand, the cuff of their worn green jacket brushing against her throat. “Let one who is without sin cast the first stone,” Anna whispers in the shell of Jo’s ear.

Anna pries the stone from Jo’s palm, and Jo staggers forward, braces her hands against Anna’s shoulders.

She will not fall. 

“We need to get you home,” Anna says. “We have work to do.” 


End file.
